Until Death

by Alicia Rasley

  Will was at a corner table. As I sat down, he said, “What’re you doing with that guy?”

  I wasn’t about to tell him that Mike had set himself up as my bodyguard. “None of your business, Will. Now tell me what was so important?”

  With a surly shrug, he asked, “Did you see the story in the paper? They made it seem like I’m some sort of crook. Because I made some money. Legally. And all that shit about his family farm. What farm? What wasn’t rented has been fallow for years.”

  “I know.” I patted Will’s hand maternally.

  Big mistake. He looked up at me, gratification bright in his eyes. He seized my hand and said, “Meggie, it really helps to know you’re on my side. You know that I didn’t cheat that old guy. You know I paid market price for the land. And it’s not fair I should have to give it back.”

  I agreed. But I didn’t know what was best for everyone. If Murdoch had murdered Don, then the more exposure of the facts, the better. But Wanda had a point too. Maybe it was safer just to end the whole thing and wipe out his need for revenge. “What are you going to do?”

  “You know what they say. The best defense is a good offense. I’m not going to take this lying down. I just want to know that you’ll be backing me.”

  I regarded him with some wariness. He seemed sincere. But then, Will usually was sincere. That didn’t mean he was going to deal with me in an aboveboard manner. He hadn’t survived in a cutthroat industry by being forthright. He was, after all, sincerely playing Wanda right now.

  I withdrew my hand to pick up my purse. “What about Wanda? Last I heard, she was going to settle, and that’s what you wanted.”

  He made a dismissive gesture. “She thinks she can pay him off with a million or so. Only, he’s holding out for the land. So she’d have to pay him what the land is worth, plus a premium for his trouble. And she’s figuring I’ll kick in some, just to keep the land.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I kind of got the idea she was playing you, hoping you’d give in on that.”

  “Maybe I would have last week. But that was before he called me a cheat and a liar in public. This is my goddamn town, and I’m not going to let him get away with it.”

  This I approved of. “That’s the spirit. Get yourself a good publicist and go after the good press. Make a couple of big donations to win some support from the powers-that-be.”

  “Nah, that’s Wanda’s tack. She thinks if she gives some money to the symphony, she’ll get all the high-society types to forget Murdoch. But not me. I’m fighting fire with fire.”

  A sense of dread overcame me. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m countersuing. For defamation. My lawyer just filed. I’ll tie him up in court for years. And Murdoch’s got no goddamn defense against this. He’ll have to pay me before this is done.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  I WAS TOO BUSY, as we exited the bar, dealing with Mike’s territoriality and Will’s petulance, to think through this new lawsuit. It was only after Will stomped off, tossing a twenty to the young fella he had watching his Lamborghini, that I mentioned his litigation plans to Mike. And, true to his nature, Mike went searching for some danger in it.

  But once he explained it, I had to agree. This defamation suit might assuage Will’s sense of injustice, but it also might enflame Murdoch’s resentment. Mike said grimly, “If you think it’s been ugly so far, wait till they’re trading charges in front of the TV cameras.”

  The truth of this came home to me a couple of days later. Unfortunately, I wasn’t there to meet it. I was at the office when I got a gasping phone call from my son. “Mom—”

  “I know. I’ll be right home.”

  By the time I got home, he was more calm. But he thrust a legal document at me. “A deputy came by and left this. Mom, are you going to be arrested?”

  My heart lurched into my throat. I had to swallow it back before I said firmly, “Of course not. Now let me see this.”

  “I already read some of it.” Now his childlike panic was easing. Unfortunately, it was being replaced with anger. His face got hard. “It’s that guy Will. The one with the Diablo. He’s saying Dad did it all—cheated that old guy and him too.”

  The document was an interrogatory from an attorney, asking what I knew about the sale of the Murdoch farm. The direction of the questioning was definitely towards scapegoating Don. I tossed the papers on the kitchen table. “Just routine. I’ll have the attorney deal with it.”

  Tommy grabbed the document and, with a harsh twist of his hand, rifled through the pages. “He’s telling the truth, isn’t he? Dad did this. Cheated everyone. Like he cheated us.”

  “He didn’t . . .” My voice died. I cleared my throat and restarted. “There’s a fine line between hardball business and what’s on the other side of the line. But you know he didn’t mean to—”

  “Didn’t mean to what? Didn’t mean to screw up? Didn’t mean to screw around? Oh, right. Look, Mom, I know about that. Once when he took me to a baseball game, he met her there. I was like his alibi. He went off to get popcorn in the third inning and didn’t come back till the bottom of the fifth. So, it’s like he made me cheat too, because I didn’t tell you.”

  “Tommy . . .” I didn’t know what to say, especially as Don’s betrayal hit me with renewed force. To use his own son that way, to teach him to lie. But I couldn’t resurrect that old hurt. “It’s done now. We need to let all that go and just get on with life.”

  “Yeah, sure.” He cast the document aside. “We can just pretend, right? Pretend it’s all okay.”

  Stumbling over my own words, I said, “I mean, we just don’t let it get too much in the way. There’s nothing we can do to change the past, so we have to, you know. Make our life.”

  “Easy for you to say.” He headed for the stairs. “You got to divorce him. I can’t.”

  As is generally true with teenagers, it only got worse. That evening I caught Tommy watching—unprecedentedly—the local news. “I’m seeing if they say anything about Dad.”

  “What about the Simpsons rerun?” I grabbed for the remote, but he pulled it away.

  “I might as well know what’s going on. It’s not like you’re going to tell me.”

  “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you what I know.”

  He glanced back over his shoulder at me. “Really? Then tell me what my inheritance was. You never did make that clear. And it’s my money, so I have a right to know.” I hesitated. Triumphantly, he said, “See? You won’t tell me.”

  Just then a photo of Will flashed on the screen, and Tommy hunched over, studying the TV as if the reporter was revealing secret codes for the latest Demon Smash videogame. I could turn off the TV and order him to his room, but that would do no good. So I sat down next to him and watched as Will proclaimed his innocence and accused Olen Murdoch of slander.

  Fortunately, the reporter mentioned Don only once: “The estate of the late real estate developer Don Ross is also party to the lawsuit.”

  The phone rang a minute later, and Tommy leaped for it. I could tell it was friend, or maybe something less than a friend, calling to ask about the story. Tommy responded with a few terse sentences, then slammed the phone down. It started ringing again immediately.

  “Let it go to voicemail,” I told him, and stony-faced, he waited out the rings.

  Then we heard Will’s voice. “Hey, Meg, told you I was going to fight fire with fire. Call me about that lunch. I really want to get together with you. You know, to talk about all this.”

  Tommy looked at me. “Are you dating that guy?”

  It might have been my mother, demanding to know whether that hoodlum really thought she would let me ride to the prom on his motorcycle. And I responded with the same squirm. “I told you I was doing some business with him. Before all this lawsuit stuff, anyway.”


  Then Tommy shrugged. “Yeah, I guess if you guys were dating, he wouldn’t be pulling this. He wouldn’t want to make you mad.”

  On the one hand, the last thing I wanted was Tommy’s father exposed as a cheat and a fraud. On the other hand, this lawsuit of Will’s might be the only way to flush out a murderer. “He feels like he’s been vilified, and he’s fighting back. It doesn’t have anything to do with you or me. But—” I hesitated. “He’s probably going to be putting the blame onto your dad.”

  Tommy was watching me closely. “So, are you saying he’ll be lying when he does?”

  I wish they’d stop teaching these kids critical thinking in school. They’ll all grow up to be lawyers. “I’m just warning you. It could be tense for a while, if they fight this out in court.”

  Tommy hunched his shoulders. “At least I’ll get to hear the truth for once.”

  “Come on. The truth that matters is that your dad loved you, and he was a good father.”

  “Was he? You say that like it’s so easy. Like him showing up every other Friday and going to my track meets and paying some support made him a good father.”

  “He did a lot more than that.”

  “Not recently. And—” he drew into himself, his hands clenching. “And shouldn’t a dad set a good example? But it sounds like he did things that he’d tell me not to do.”

  There wasn’t much I could say in response. That was one of the charges I hurled at Don during the last days of our marriage. Would you tell your son he should be like you now? I’d demanded. But I didn’t think Don had more than a moment’s shame at that thought.

  “I don’t know,” I finally said. “I guess in a way, you have to pick and choose what will serve as an example.” I broke off, not entirely willing to admit that adult truth, that people sometimes—often—don’t live up to their own ideals. I concluded weakly, “But you have to respect your father. Whether you want to or not.”

  He resumed his channel-surfing, pausing at another station. They billed the lawsuit as “A David and Goliath Story,” pitting poor old farmer Murdoch against the combined prowess of Concord’s Richest Man and The Powerful Real Estate Developer.

  Will was saying, “The old guy got taken. But not by me. Hell, I got taken too. Don Ross never told me there was any problem with the title or the transfer. I bought it fair and square. I’m just getting the blame because I have the deep pockets, and because I’m still alive.”

  His voice had hardly faded when the phone rang again, and before I could say anything, Tommy picked it up. He listened and then, like a besieged politician, he muttered, “No comment,” and slammed the receiver down. “A reporter,” he told me in a disbelieving voice.

  Immediately, the phone rang again, and this time I didn’t have to tell him to let the machine get it. Another reporter. “Why me, and not Wanda?” I wondered aloud.

  “Her phone is unlisted. She probably did it that way because she expected this to happen, knowing Dad.” And then he stalked off upstairs to his room.

  I stabbed out Mike Warren’s office number. I must have memorized it at some point, because I didn’t even think of looking it up. When I got through to his service, I left a message asking him to call back the next day.

  When the phone rang next, I assumed it was a reporter and let the machine get it. But when I heard Mike’s voice, I grabbed the receiver. “Hey! You didn’t have to call right back.”

  “No problem.” His voice was so blessedly sane compared to the reporters’ insinuating tones and Will’s gleeful chortle. “What did you need?”

  “Advice.” The word came hard. I didn’t like to admit that I needed his counsel. But unlike Barb or Vince, whose advice I would ordinarily solicit happily, Mike had not only the professional experience but also knowledge of all that had transpired. In fact, I realized, he was the only one who knew it all. Momentarily, I wondered how this man, associated with the worst moments of my life, was now practically a partner. Transference, no doubt. Cheered somehow by this, I said, “The, you know . . . it’s hit the fan. We’re getting calls from reporters, and I got served with legal papers, and . . . it’s just a mess around here. Tommy is acting all hard and cynical, but I know it’s killing him to hear them saying that his father committed fraud. I don’t know what’s going to happen once all his schoolmates find out.”

  “So get him out of town.”

  It sounded too easy. “But won’t that just be avoiding the issue?”

  “He’s a kid. He’s allowed to avoid issues, especially ones he can’t fix. And growing up doesn’t require confronting reporters on his front lawn. Let him be a normal teenager for a couple weeks, somewhere no one knows about all this.”

  Now that I had permission from an authority figure, my mind went busily to work. Driver’s ed was over, so I could send him down to my mother’s early. But the airfare would cost a fortune this close to the departure date. Maybe I could trade weeks at track camp.

  “Okay, great. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll get him out of town.”

  “You might think of that yourself. This lawsuit isn’t your problem, and you can’t fix it. So get away from the shrapnel. I’ve got a cabin up near Warren Dunes you can borrow.”

  I was touched. More than that, I was tempted. I could take Tommy, maybe a couple of his friends . . . “Thanks, but no,” I said reluctantly. “I’d love to, but even if I could afford to take off work, which I can’t, my meeting with the insurance company’s review board is in a week. I have to get something—anything—before then. At least enough to make them worry I’d have a case to take to the insurance commissioner if they refuse to honor the policy.”

  “You’re nowhere close.”

  It was no more than a summation of the truth, but when I heard that flat tone, my gratitude vanished. “Thanks a lot for your vote of confidence there, Mike. And I have plenty. Enough to cast some doubt, at least.”

  “You’ll need more than that,” he said just before we hung up.

  An hour later, I heard the fax chattering in my home office. I went in and found a one-page statement from Mike declaring that, in his professional opinion, his client Donald Ross was not suicidal in the week before his death. Scrawled underneath his signature was PRN.

  The translation came through the thirty years that separated me from Latin class. Pro re nata: Use as circumstances require.

  Thoughtfully, I put the fax into the folder containing my case against the insurance company. Did this mean Mike had come over to my way of thinking? Or just that he’d come to care so little for his profession that he was willing to violate its ethics to help me out?

  I told myself his motive didn’t matter. I’d use his statement next week if I needed it, and reckon later with the debt I’d owe him.

  The university track coach was agreeable to shifting Tommy’s camp time to a few weeks earlier, and Tommy himself made only the pro forma protest required of teenagers. So Sunday I drove him down to Purdue and got him settled at his dormitory. After a moment or two of macho posturing, he bonded with his three suite-mates and got busy noting down their times in the 400 and organizing a mile-relay team. I had to smile, recalling those early playground days when he’d arrive at my bench to introduce his five “new best friends.” Even the prospect of rain didn’t faze him. “They got a great indoor track. They hosted the Big Ten meet, remember? It’s air-conditioned.” He even called out a cheerful goodbye as I headed out. I wasn’t dumb enough to ask for a kiss in front of his new buddies.

  Just like that, Tommy’s anger and anguish were gone, and inwardly I blessed Mike Warren. He was right. A kid didn’t have to confront every issue, turn back every assault. He just had to play sports and do his homework and grow up.

  I just wished I had a camp to go to myself.

  The rain had started up again by the time I got home, a nice steady rain that p
romised to soften the dry ground and fill the reservoir back up. I went out on to the porch and sat there watching the grass get green again—it really did seem to happen in front of my eyes—and listening to the pelter on the shale roof. I thought I could track a single drop from way up in the sky to its big plop into the river, and then count a thousand little rain craters there in the water, spreading and fading and being replaced with new ones. The phone rang once, twice, and I stayed put. But the disconnect was followed by an immediate redial, and finally, a bit damp from the mist, I went back in and picked up the phone.

  “Hello, Meggie.” It was Wanda.

  I wasn’t quite used to this level of familiarity from the old enemy, so I said only, “Hello.”

  She was calling, she explained, because she needed my help. That sounded reasonable enough. Then she burst out, “Tell Will to drop that goddamned defamation case.”

  “Uhh—” I regained my sense of humor along with my articulation. “I thought you had him well in hand.”

  “I thought so too,” she admitted grudgingly. “He was about to ante up half a million maybe, plus sixty acres.”

  Now why didn’t it surprise me that Will had been telling her what she wanted to hear? And that it was something different from what he’d told me?

  “And then he gets some wild hair, probably because of you, and—”

  “Me?” I said, honestly aggrieved. “I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Oh, sure. You’re the one who’s got the obsession with this Murdoch guy.”

  “Obsession?” My voice rose a little. “What if he murdered Don?”

  “Maybe he did. I don’t know. I mean, maybe he didn’t.” She sounded uncharacteristically weak. “Maybe it really was just an accident. Don’d had a drink—he could have stumbled–”

  “Yeah, sure. I heard that theory too. But the autopsy report showed he wasn’t drunk.”